Starship Crewpers Game
Co-operative • Worker Placement • Polyomino Puzzles • Multi-Use Action Cards​
1-8 players • ages 12+ • 60-120 minutes
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Starship Crewpers is a gaming endeavor that has been in the works (in uncountable variations at this point) for over 12 years.
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The core idea has always been to create a cooperative game that evokes crewing a large starship, not just pulling the strings of a few central characters, but managing a big 'ol vessel chalk-full of people all of whom contribute to the operation of the vessel and the progression of an epic narrative story by completing vital missions.
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In its current iteration (which should also be its final form...), the game has a shared bag of custom meeples that represent the bulk of your ship's crew. Each player has a unique 7-card deck of point-of-view character cards which get used one at a time per round.
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The POV cards dictate how many meeples you draw from the bag and how many actions you take in the form of placing meeples or activating action cards. The ship's current MORALE and EFFICIENCY levels can help or hinder these actions.
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Meeples get placed into the polyomino tiles, get moved through the ship and eventually placed on missions. The missions cards depict various open shapes that need to be filled with polyominos of certain colors. They also have pink impediments (such as ship damage and crew injuries) which get triggered every time players draw pink meeples from the bag.
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Missions are completed when they are filled with polyominos and a score is calculated based on the colors and types of meeples that are filling those polyominos. If your score is too low your mission will fail and your game will be lost if you bungle too many missions!
CUSTOM MEEPLES + hollow POLYOMINO TILES = meeplOminos!
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Unique to this game are the hollowed-out polyomino tiles. These tiles will be generated on the ship and maneuvered down the length of it. During this time players will need to fill he polyominos with meeples of the colors required on mission cards.
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No one is perfect and sometimes crew members mess up. When players draw pink meeples they get placed into the polyominos and if they remain there by the time the polyomino is applied to a mission, the risk of failure increases!
POV CHARACTERS
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Each player will a 7-card deck of POV (point of view) characters ranked 1-7. Each card has a special ability usable once per round.
Each round players will privately choose a character card to determine turn order, how many meeples each payer draws and how many actions each player has.
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When a player chooses to use one of their action cards, its effectiveness may be measured off the POV card's color, rank and specialty.
SHIP BOARD
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The center of your Starship Crewpers game experience is the ship on which you and the rest of the crew serve. There is a central grid where the polyomino tiles you generate eventually get placed and filled with crew meeples. The polyomino tiles get moved and rotated from their entry points to an exit point where they get applied to a mission puzzle.
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Maintaining high MORALE will allow each player to draw and place more meeples from the crew bag every turn. Keeping ship EFFICIENCY high allows players to garner greater results from the functions of the worker placement spots and your action cards. Obviously, keeping your ship intact will keep the entire crew alive and thriving.
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When crew meeples get injured they go to the Med Bay and when they get over-stressed they are sent to the Counselor's Couch. If either of these sections get too full your ship's morale and efficiency will tart to suffer.
MISSIONS
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The crux of the game lies within the missions. Each mission represents a scene in the current episode. Players will need to apply meeple-filled polyomino tiles to each mission card to fill out the grid and cover up the pink impediments.
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For every meeple you place on the grid with a color matching the mission parameters, the higher your score will be. If pink meeples get placed on the mission they will detract from your score. If you score high enough (often you may not know exactly what score you need) you will succeed. If your score is too low you will fumble the mission.
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Too many failures and you will lose the game leaving your sector of space in shambles!